Trevor Hoffman and Brian Giles are due to become free agents after the season. Both say they want to remain Padres, but they also sound like they're not inclined to take the San Diego Discount.

This may just be some precoital posturing, but if they're serious about needing "true market value" to consummate the union, all we can say is:

Brian Giles, you're a good guy. Goodbye.

Trevor, your Time is up.

Sorry fellas, but facts and working conditions are working against you. We'll miss you. The Padres will miss you. But if you really need $10 million or $12 million a year, you'd best look elsewhere.

Don't get us wrong. We have nothing but respect for each player. Giles has been the team's most – you could argue only – consistent everyday performer in this most inconsistent of years for the Padres. He's a role model for younger teammates who always plays hard and usually plays smart, is among the best in the league at getting on base and is popular in the clubhouse.

Hoffman is simply one of the great closers in baseball history, and he's got 34 saves this season, good enough to move him into second place all-time.

We'll also add that we'd like to see the Padres open the purse strings, keep their best players and go out and get a few more without worrying so much about the bottom line. The new ballpark was supposed to alleviate some of that.

But given the Padres' reality, we'd rather see some new blood here that's a better fit for Petco Park and the Padres' future.

Here's what we know: When he blossomed into a fulltime player in Pittsburgh in 1999, Giles was a bona fide .300-hitting, 35-homer, 115-RBI guy. For four years Giles' slugging percentage hovered around .600, and his OPS around 1.000, topping out at an eye-popping 1.072 in 2002.

He came to the Padres late in the 2003 season. His combined numbers as a Pirate-Padre were 20 homers and 88 RBI.

Last year, his first full season with the Padres and the team's first in Petco, he had 23 homers and 94 RBI. This year, despite an August surge, he's got 14 homers and 71 RBI; unless he has a Ruthian September he'll again finish with 18 to 20 homers and 85 or 90 RBI. He leads the NL with 96 walks and ranks among leaders with a .421 on-base percentage.

Even conceding that Petco cuts into Giles' power numbers, Giles, who turns 35 over the winter, appears to be closer to a 20-homer hitter than the player who averaged 37 homers in Pittsburgh. He's obviously no longer the Man of Steel (City). His slugging percentage, a team-best .504, is 100 points below his best days.

Giles is a solid defender but not particularly fast and not particularly suited to Petco's expansive right and center fields. He already makes $8.3 million a year.

We say the $10 million and $12 million contracts go to the guys who crank 40 homers and knock in 120 runs. In Petco, that would be right-handed pull hitters like Richie Sexson or Troy Glaus or Andruw Jones. Maybe Vladimir Guerrero. Or Alex Rodriguez.

Maybe Xavier Nady is ready to become one of those guys. The Padres need to find out. We already know Giles isn't going to put up those numbers playing half his games at Petco.

Hoffman is a different story: The team's elder statesman who's looking for the same kind of respect from the front office that Tony Gwynn sought for spending so many years in Padres pinstripes– monetary affirmation that his worth goes beyond his Hall of Fame-quality statistics.

With Gwynn retired, Hoffman is the most recognizable face of the Padres, a family man and solid citizen who lends his time to many charitable pursuits around San Diego. He's also a clubhouse jokester who helps keep things loose.

Hoffman makes $5 million, and is probably underpaid when compared to his American League counterpart, New York's Mariano Rivera, who earns $10.5 million a year. General manager Kevin Towers has publicly called re-signing Hoffman "priority one."

But being worth that and expecting it from the Padres is a different story. This is a front office that held Gwynn's hand to the fire and low-balled him in his final season when they should have handed him anything he wanted. When it comes to contract time, this is an unsentimental group more likely to reward a young, relatively unproven player than a long-in-the-tooth veteran on the downside.

And there's the rub. Hoffman is still a premier closer, but he's clearly on the downside. He turns 38 in mid-October. When he once posted ERAs as low as 1.47 and 2.13, he's at 3.43 this year and in danger of finishing with his highest ERA in 10 years. He's got a 1-5 record, and virtually all of those losses have come when he's brought into a tie game or a nonsave situation.

Various Padres often refer to Hoffman as "lights out" but, really, it's been a couple years since that was true. He gets hit regularly and gets by more on guile and his killer changeup than good stuff.

Facing those realities, it might be in the Padres' best interest to let Hoffman and Giles walk, take that money and retool the team to better fit Petco Park.